Spooky Nights in Middle earth
by Illwynd
Summary: A collection of spooky drabbles and ficlets, with stories from various parts of Arda, written for Halloween.
1. Firemoon Night

**Fire-moon Night  
**Disclaimer: Tolkien created it. I played with it.  
Summary: Somewhere in Harad, one night a year...

The moon was round and dusty orange as it rose over the horizon of south Harad. Wind shrieked and clouds scuttled across the sky like tumbling leaves. No stars shone. No fires were lit that night, and all the people gathered silently around an old woman who spoke terrible truths. The mask she wore, with its squinted eyes and wide-screaming mouth, was a shadowy horror in the dimness. Her arms waved in the air over her head. Children huddled, shivering.

All other times, the people of that village revered the power of the Eye.

On fire-moon night, they feared it.


	2. We Are Always Hungry

**We Are Always Hungry**  
Disclaimer: Not mine!  
Summary: Somewhere in Mirkwood...

We are always hungry.

We spin our webs, but the forest is emptier than it has been in years past. Not entirely our doing.

We catch the black squirrels, though their blood is bitter, not very nourishing, and there are many of us to feed. What I would give for some soft, blinking creature to wander into my webs!

And we are not the only hunters here. The pale Elves go silently about on errands unknown to us, and kill us whenever they see us. We try not to let them see us.

There are legends of great spiders, our foremothers in forgotten days, who could feast on light itself, and sit glutted, sated, belching shadow and spinning it into webs. If we knew that trick, the gloom of Mirkwood would be darker still, and none would escape from us. We too would eat our fill.

We are always hungry…


	3. Cat's Eye

**Cat's Eye  
**Disclaimer: Not mine!  
Summary: A decade ago Berúthiel was sent away from Gondor, but she has not yet been forgotten by Men... or beasts.

The moon was a yellow slit in the darkness, a shining cat's-eye that shone reflected in the River. The people were all shut up safely in their houses, and the streets were mine. I held my tail high and out of the dirt of the gutter as I wandered. My whiskers twitched at a scent—someone had dropped an apple-core, still sticky on the ends with bits of crushed nuts and a thick sweet coating. I hunched over it, eating, my fur puffed out in contentment. There was no reason to drag this delicacy back to my burrow just yet; there was nothing to fear tonight. I had heard the yearly commotion hours before. It had startled me from sleep for long enough to peer out and see people rushing past with brooms in their hands, and a coal-black cat dashing madly before them.

I remember the story told to me and my siblings by our grandfather. He was an old rat by then, so tired and worn that he barely bothered to groom his matted fur anymore, but he was also old enough to remember a day in his youth when, for the first time, the cats—awful vicious beasts who killed our kind—were driven from the city. There had been an air of festivity to the day, he said, though people spoke in hushed tones of some woman who had been sent away at last. Only a handful of cats were allowed to remain, "useful" ones with striped or mottled coats, and even those were kept indoors that day. And every year since, on that same day, the people would frighten away the cats. They wouldn't harm them (though I would not mind if they did) but at least it meant that for one night, the city was safe for us. We relished the opportunity, so near to winter, to fill up on all the food we could reach.

I sat back on my haunches to lick the sweetness from my paws, and glanced skyward, towards the moon. But something blocked my view. I blinked to clear my vision.

Two cat's-eyes towered over me, gleaming yellowly against the darkness. I didn't even have time to scream.


	4. Echoes in the Deep

**Echoes in the Deep  
**Disclaimer: My name ain't Tolkien  
Summary: In Moria, voices echo.

Shh! Young one, you'll wake it. We are here. There are many of us. Many.

_Many many._

So many we will one day burst the seams of the mountains, and cover the lands all around like ants from the anthill.

Dark here.Wonderful dark._ Dark. Dark. _

We didn't build it. No no. And we're not the only things that call it home now..

Shh, you'll wake it. _Shh!_

Do you hear—do you hear that? Something is moving above us. _Above_. In the upper halls?

_Clang-crash-splash._

Did you hear_—did you hear?_

Did it hear?

_Did it hear?_

It's awake…


	5. Transformation

**Transformation  
**Disclaimer: Tolkien created it. I played with it.  
Summary: One way to make an Orc.  
Notes: Originally written for the Halloween Drabble Masquerade at BoG

He was alone. Terrible things had been done to him, but he had ceased to mind the pain. Only this terrified him: his memories had slowly eroded to darkness, until he didn't know what he had forgotten.

_His own hand moved upward and touched his face like a stranger's._

A bowl of water had been shoved under the door. It sloshed over onto the dirt floor before shivering to stillness. As he reached for it, torchlight shone through the cracks in his prison.

_His fingernails, broken like glass, left red trails along his skin._

It had been a mirror in the gloom, showing him a mangled thing. He had spilled all the water in his horror. He wished he had not seen it, for now he could no longer remember what he used to look like.

_He scratched at the skin that was not his own. Somehow it had grown over his face like mold. He tore open the boils and scraped at the scabs._

It was no use. The face was his now.

_Dark blood dripped in his eyes, down his cheeks, into his lolling mouth. He shuddered._

Its mouth drank his fear, and swallowed it down like bitterness.


End file.
